What Cordelia Saw
by Emote Control
Summary: A one-shot explaining why Cordelia left Sunnydale following graduation.


It was the night before graduation, and the Buffy and her friends were hard at work in the library. Watcher's diaries, extradimensional bestiaries, treatises on secret occult sciences, each one precious and rare and some old and fragile, had to be moved without damage and without exception. Gasoline and fertilizer had to be emplaced, fuses had to be laid, and it all had to be done quickly.

But in the midst of this preparation, Giles went over to Cordelia. "I need to talk to you about something, in private."

They left the library, and Giles laid it out. "I hear you won't be going to college. I find that hard to believe. You are among the most intelligent and resourceful people that I have ever met, and you know how to apply yourself, and your grades and test scores reflect that."

Cordelia sighed, a rare moment of weakness. "My father had – has – enemies. Once he lost his money and power, they were free to act against him. They pulled strings, and made sure I didn't get accepted anyplace."

"So I had heard. But the Watchers have influence too, and even in my disgraced state I have friends there. If you are willing to apprentice yourself to me and receive Watcher training, I can have you accepted to UC Sunnydale and you can get a degree in the meantime."

"You think I'd be a good Watcher?" She was honestly surprised.

"You'll be a great Watcher. It's not just giving crazy orders from England and being a mentor, you know. We perform many, many other tasks as well."

"Like what?" Cordelia asked.

"I'm not allowed to tell you until you complete your Watcher training. " Giles answered. "But in your training you will learn the true astrology, not the mass-produced yammerings in newspapers. You will learn the full history of the ancient world and of ancient man, not the fragments archeologists have pieced together." He had her, he could tell. "And with your abilities, I predict you will go far in the service of the Watcher Council. Good will honor you, evil will fear you, and people will come to you for knowledge."

"What about other schools?" She asked. "UCLA has a great math program."

"That I won't be able to justify." He explained. "But come to Sunnydale, undergo the training, and see what you want to do."

Cordelia paused; a sly look entered her eyes. "Just like a teacher. You want me to become a Watcher, but that's secondary. You really just don't want me to waste my 'potential'. Well I'm sorry, but I've been doing just that my whole life."

"I would disagree. You have been doing anything but wasting –" Cordelia cut him off.

"Let me tell you something, Mr. Watcher. I figured it out when I was twelve. I didn't know the names – Watcher, Hellmouth, Slayer, Master, stuff like that. But I'd seen things flit across the clouds that weren't birds or bats. I'd gone into back rooms of mansions and seen the pentagrams beneath the carpet. I saw the disheveled graves. I saw that Sunnydale is a place where weird stuff happens, I saw there was something nasty underground that gave orders, I saw the Mayor was in the thick of it. When you came I saw you were no ordinary librarian, and ditto for Buffy. I see plenty, and see I need to get out."

"You don't understand." Giles protested. "You have no idea the task you have set for yourself. In Sunnydale, you're the most beautiful and popular girl in town. But in LA, you'll be just one in a crowd, and many in that crowd will have training and talent."

"I don't care." She answered. "I'm getting out of this quite literally god-forsaken town. I'm going to place without magic, without monsters, where I know what causes the screams I hear in the night. It'll be hard, of course. Maybe I won't be an actress, maybe I'll be a secretary or a cashier or even a maid. But no matter what I am, I'll be in a world that makes sense. I've helped you because – well, I don't really know why, except that I just don't want to sit by while people die when you wimps aren't. But once I graduate I can leave, and I will leave, and that's final."

Later, when the setup was done and the others had gone home to get some precious sleep, Buffy approached Giles.

"I heard what you and Cordy talked about. She's making a mistake."

"I know. To be a Watcher is to be scion of an ancient tradition, reaching back more than twenty millennia. To give it up to be an entertainer …" he sighed.

Buffy shook her head. "Not that. Thinking her plan will work."

"I know." Giles rubbed his glasses. "Cordelia is a terrible actress. She can't even lie that well."

"True, but I was talking about her plan to leave the supernatural behind. It won't work, because she's truly a good person."

"I'm surprised to hear you say that, Buffy."

"I said good, not nice. She's petty, selfish, greedy, callous and vain. But that's not what matters. What matters is that when any other student would have driven off, she rammed her car into a bunch of vampires and saved everyone's life. She's come through for us, time and again, when all she had to do was walk out the door and not come back, and we wouldn't have stopped her. And not just that. With her intellect and former wealth, she could have become a terrible threat – and she didn't."

Giles nodded. "I see your point. With her character, and awareness of the supernatural, Cordelia will get involved, whether she plans to or not."

"The only thing she can't see is herself."


End file.
